This spread is in the Micky Mouse journal I made last year. One year ago, on this date, the kid got her braces! She chose to have hot pink bands around the brackets, but the technician wasn’t paying attention and she ended up with purple!
I found this image of Minnie in my stash with a big smile, so I modified it to include the braces.
I showed it to the kid. Her comment was “You put THAT in your book????”
Welcome to February!
This month I am focusing on a theme of Romance. Valentine’s Day is February 14, so it seems appropriate. I’m going with roses and other flowers, pink, red, white and gold, hearts and other items associated with romance.
Above is the cover I’m using for my micro art journal. I used this one last year and I liked it so much, I’m going to use it again.
Welcome to 2024!
I am beginning my year by going back to my roots. I realize, it may seem strange to go backwards to go forward. This year, however, I want to continue doing things that worked for me, while leaving behind the things that didn’t.
One of these is my tiny art journals. I love them because they give me just enough space to do a bit of journaling, keep track of some things that I need/want to remember and just enough room to create a small art piece. They are fun to do, and don’t take up a lot of time.
One of the things I love about creating new papers for my art journaling stash is that’s it’s just playing! There’s no particular goal… Just applying paint to paper in any way that I feel like. There’s something very calming about the process.
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I’m not sure I’m done with this one.
An unexpected color combination appeared early on, so I went for it. I wanted more organic shapes and flow. I think I got a start on that in some areas, but I think it needs more development.
More needs to happen in that hot pink, for sure!
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When I first start a page, I often select “odd” colors, just to see what will happen when I combine them.
The purple/grey/pink combo isn’t really new… or uncommon. Many people like this combination. It’s calm, soothing, with just a bit of “pop”.
The brown/olive/red-orange developed from experimentation. At first, I wasn’t sure about it. That’s one of the reasons why some areas are more “muted”. Then I realized it had a kind of “retro” feel to it. So I went with it, and now I’m happy that I did!
Although today was very busy with non-art things, I did manage to get in some fun painting time! I completed this page of “random acts of art”, using a variety of painting materials, mostly gouache.
I’m finding that I really like using gouache. It’s a bit like using watercolor. But when it dries, it’s a bit more permanent. I can paint over it or next to it without it totally reactivating the dry paint. If I’m careful, I can do all kinds of interesting things that I couldn’t with regular paints.
This week, in the Facebook Micro Art Journaling group, we’re creating “stash builders”.
Today’s assignment is to use whatever art materials we want, or have at hand, to color on any paper. We can try all different types of paper, or junk mail, or whatever we like.
I am using mixed media paper. It was already coated with a thin layer of white gesso. Color was applied using Inktense pencils , Stabilo pencils , Neocolor II , and gouache . I also had a set of Bree Reese, metallic watercolor creams .
Today, I am creating content for my tiny accordion books. For the first one, I used journaling stencils and traced out designs that I thought were interesting and created patterns.
There is no particular message, or order, other than I went though the stack of the stencils, one-by-one and if I saw something I thought would be fun, added it to the page with pencil.
I may add more interesting designs directly with the paint, but I think I’m off to a good start here!
Now that I have my Arteza gouache paints all set up and ready to use, I’ve folded a few accordion books from 140 lb watercolor paper.
I don’t have any particular themes in mind yet, but I’m thinking for one, I want to use some journaling stencils that I have to create various random shapes throughout the book. I think that would be fun to paint, like using a coloring book!
This week, I challenged the members of the Micro Art Journaling group on Facebook to create a micro layout, micro page, or tiny artwork using circles as the theme. They were also given the quotation below.
This layout began with various pieces of paper, including some text, being glued down to the page with matte medium.
When that dried, I added a light, irregular coat of gesso that had been thinned with some water.
Things are changing rapidly over the world. That got me to thinking about all of my friends who live, not only in my country, but around the world. My art friends, my Zentangle friends, my Facebook friends.
I want all of them to know that I think about them. I worry about them. I pray for them. And if I could do something for them, I would and I will.
This week, I challenged the members of the Micro Art Journaling group on Facebook to create a page or layout that included the color green, with the theme of healing.
It’s a stressful time, and we need to think about taking care of ourselves. It is important to maintain as much inner peace and calm as possible, along with taking care of ourselves and our community.
Because of this, I’ve chosen to create a “glue book” style layout using colors chosen to represent watermelon tourmaline. This is the stone of the heart chakra, and represents healing for health, emotions and spirit.
As I mentioned yesterday, I’m working with the colors Teal, Yellow and Grey this week.
I decided to do a layout in my micro art journal. As I was looking for papers in the appropriate color scheme, I came across this big yellow partial circle shape in a magazine. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, but I cut it out and set it aside.
Yesterday, I challenged the members of the Micro Art Journaling FB group to practice mark making. That was the inspiration for this layout in my tiny art journal.
I began with a Carbon Black, Liquatex marker. I made marks around the pages to create a kind of frame.
Next, I used Medium Magenta, Brilliant Purple and Light Blue Permanent, Liquatex markers to add scribbles of color to the pages.
I keep a container of small-to-tiny scraps of paper. I grabbed it and looked through to find pieces that had black and white markings, and anything with similar colors. I used Liquatex Matte Medium to glue these to the page.
It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted a layout from my tiny art journal. These books are 2-7/8 inches high by 2 inches wide when closed.
Today’s layout was inspired by a color challenge from another group. The colors were Quinacridone Magenta, Naples Yellow and Mars Black. I was working on a full-sized layout and had some leftover paint, so I spread it on the background on this tiny page.
Sometimes, you just need tiny pencils! These are 1-1/2" to 1-3/4" long.
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Meow!?
I don’t think you can have a Spooktacular Celebration without the traditional, familiar, black cat.
Here, our favorite feline was apparently contemplating dinner when one of the vittles decided to speak up for itself!
Perhaps our furry fiend will contemplate a nice bowl of kibble instead!
Images were stamped and then watercolor was applied. Colored pencil and gel pen were added for color and emphasis.
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Jalousie? Teensy spiders just hanging around…
I’m so happy with how this came out! I wasn’t sure my idea would work. And it was still a bit mundane until I added the red dots to the spiders and the white dots next to their strings!
This was created using the tangle Jalousie, which was drawn first with black, Pigma Micron pens. Then watercolor was applied to establish the basic color range. Colored pencil, smoothed out with Copic Blender added depth to the colors. The red dots were added with a red, Posca pen. White dots were created with a white, Pentel, Juice Up gel pen creating a highlight along one side of the spiders’ strings.
Zonked!
Every so often, I get a wild idea to try something… and it ends up taking much longer, or being more complicated than I thought it would be. This layout is one of those.
I probably should have drawn the Zonked larger. But I wanted the scale to be small so that the mummy and bats wouldn’t get totally lost in the design.
However, I don’t think I’ll be drawing this tangle again for a while!